Friday, January 8, 2010

This week has been kind of all over the place, while I've been slowly getting back to work and organizing myself and my workspace for the coming year. I managed to braid a 60 foot line of sinew before I ran out of material. I still have short pieces of sinew that I can use on small hafting projects, but I need a little bit more before I can get to my 70 foot goal. I'm not really sure where all 70 feet will be used, but if that's what people say to use, then that's what I'll use. I don't want to be the guy who backs his bow with 60 feet of sinew when everyone else uses 70 feet. Nobody wants to be that guy.

So, I've ordered some more materials. I need to restock my sinew. For the most part I use 3RiversArchery.Com, a traditional archery supplier for sinew and similar resources. I put in an order for rock and fibre optic glass with Neolithics as well. I'm still planning to offer some flintknapping workshops in St. John's in the coming weeks - a basic "beer bottle to arrowheads" pressure flaking class and also an "introduction to percussion" workshop, where people will work with hammerstones and antler billets. I'll need the Obsidian and English Flint that I have on order for the percussion workshop, so I can't really set the dates until it arrives. But hopefully things will work out for the 2nd or 3rd week of February.

I do have one demonstration date that I can share - February 21st at The Rooms, 2-4 PM. I'll be working Ramah Chert and demonstrating how stone tools were made - bring the kids!

Things are also in the plans for a workshop in Calgary at the beginning of March. I'll post more details on that when, and if, things get firmed up.

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What is Elfshot?

Long ago, when people found stone arrowheads in their fields they believed that the tiny arrows were darts used by elves or fairies to cause mischief. They called them Elfshot.

Understanding the archaeological record is like trying to put together a puzzle with most of the pieces missing. At Elfshot, we try to fill in some of those missing pieces.

Tim Rast is a Canadian archaeologist and a flintknapper who specializes in artifact reproductions and knapped jewelry based on artifacts found across the Arctic and Subarctic, with an emphasis on Newfoundland and Labrador.